Unequal Childhoods - Annette Lareau [158]
In this chapter, I answer the “what happened?” question. I take another look at the effects of social class on the youth in my study, this time focusing on their transition to adulthood. I show that in certain areas, class standing did not seem crucial. Being middle-class did not shield youths from bumps in the road such as broken hearts or dashed athletic dreams. And all of the kids expressed pleasure over their movement into adulthood. Overall, though, I find that the importance of social class did persist.8 Differences in the types and amounts of information the parents possessed continued to affect their actions. Applying to college was a family affair among the middle class. When working-class or poor youth applied to college, they depended on school personnel to help them. Hence, as I explain below, working-class and poor parents’ relationships to educators were fundamentally different from those of middle-class parents. Although all parents wanted their children to succeed, the working-class and poor families experienced more heartbreak. They were generally unable to prevent their children from being derailed from the higher education trajectory. The middle-class parents’ interventions, although often insignificant as individual acts, yielded cumulative advantages.
As their children grew older, middle-class parents continued the pattern of concerted cultivation. They actively monitored, gathered information, and intervened in their children’s academic careers. Parents of the youth raised under the accomplishment of natural growth also continued their pattern of being watchful and concerned. These parents desperately wanted their children to do well in life, and they too paid attention to their children’s schooling. They asked questions and sometimes attempted to intervene but, compared to the middle-class parents in the study, had much more limited success. Beyond primary school, educational institutions grow increasingly complex. There are many decisions to be made. Parents’ interventions are crucial for managing various aspects of secondary school experience, from high school course selection to college applications.9 As when the children were ten years old, middle-class parents had much more detailed knowledge of how schools work, and especially how higher education systems operate, than did their working-class and poor counterparts.
As discussed in Chapter 12, the benefits middle-class kids accrue do not result directly from their parents’ child-rearing methods.10 Class advantages are linked to the fact that as schools sort children, these institutions (and other institutions, as well) prioritize and reward particular cultural traits and resources. Many of these traits and resources are tied to social class standing. Differences by class in the development of language skills, highlighted in the first edition of the book, is one example. But social class also gives parents a different set of economic resources and, crucially, a different set of cultural repertoires for managing the experiences of their children as they interact with institutions such as schools, courts, hospitals, and government agencies.
Since education is legally required in the United States, and since school success is a key criterion in sorting youth for the labor market, schools are an “800-pound gorilla” in American society in the sense that they are a powerful organization with which families must interact. Schools play a powerful, sometimes overwhelming role in shaping